The important of the basic 4 supplements also called "Essential 4" are a key component of this protocol.  We often see that their importance is under valued and they are not always used in the doses suggested. The recommendations come from directly from Dr.  Andy Cutler:

• The essential four supplements are required, not optional. They are necessary to reduce oxidation and protect the body when removing mercury. They also help alleviate the symptoms of mercury toxicity and symptoms on rounds.
• Your child should be on all four of them for 2 weeks before their first chelation round.
• Start one at a time and watch for reactions in case they might be allergic a sourcing ingredient. In order to avoid this look for soy free, corn free, gluten free, etc., products if your child has these sensitivities. 
• Transdermal supplements are not a substitute for oral supplements on this protocol. You must give them by mouth to achieve the doses needed.  That means magnesium spray and epsom baths are not counted in your daily dose of magnesium. Children that are difficult to dose with oral supplements may find gummies, flavored powders or liquids more palatable.
• These supplements have dosing guidelines in the book to help you figure out how much to give. You start on the lower end and work up from there. The doses can be raised in times of illness or to alleviate round/post round issues.
• They do need to be given FOUR times a day. To clarify this we mean that magnesium and vitamin C must be given in four doses every day. Vitamin E and zinc can be given once a day if that is more convenient. Zinc with a meal to avoid nausea is recommended.

We hope these basic tips help clarify some of the misinformation you might find online about using the essential four supplements. These supplements really are important in assuring rounds are comfortable and symptoms are low.

-Jan Martin
-Tressie Taylor

Something we've noticed lately is the common use of extremely low chelator doses. While it might seem like starting with 1mg would prevent or reduce symptoms, the reality is that you're getting up at night without much of a pay off at that dose.

Chelation alone at any dose is generally going to cause some symptoms for most children but they are very manageable.  Starting too low misleads parents into thinking they are avoiding side effects when in reality, the reason they don't see symptoms is  because they aren't removing very much mercury with 1mg per dose. This also means not really any improvements either.

The protocol dosing is 1/8 -1/2 mg per pound of child. So you can actually start anywhere in this range but most parents prefer to start at 1/8mg per pound.

If there are any symptoms refer to the yeast and adrenal chapters in the book. These are the two most common reasons for symptoms seen on chelation rounds.

Remember, it might seem easier to start at 1mg but you do want rounds to be worth the investment of your time and loss of sleep. You also want your child to get better sooner rather than later.  If you start below the range, it's going to add that much more time to your chelation journey!

-Jan Martin & Tressie Taylor

Making sense of adrenals support can be confusing at first. Parents are often unsure about whether or not their child actually needs it. Is it even safe? How come no one's mentioned this before?

Adrenal fatigue is a condition that is more prevalent than previously thought. It seems to be far more common in individuals with toxicity or endocrine problems like hypothyroidism.  Generally in mainstream medicine adrenal fatigue is not recognized until you have reached adrenal failure known as Addison's Disease.  This condition is a very serious condition but this is not what I am referring to in the book or this article.  Addison's Disease requires an endocrinologist to diagnose and properly treat the condition. 

When we use the term adrenal fatigue we are referring to a condition where the adrenals glands are working but not adequately.  In most cases things like infection, toxicity and other factors have led to overworking the adrenal glands.

This leaves many children (and adults) with low cortisol levels. The gland then push out a lot of adrenaline in order to compensate. However, our bodies were not mean to live on adrenaline boosts all the time. Adrenaline was our "fight or flight" hormone which allowed our bodies to kick into higher gear in survival situations.

The problem with high adrenaline is it causes a lot of symptoms like anxiety, panic attacks, asthma like symptoms, allergies, hives, high histamines, and of course fatigue.

In some cases this goes on long enough that the thyroid starts to be affected. Your body cannot make and use the hormones it's needs without the proper balance of adrenal hormones.

I should point out that just because the book has a chapter on adrenal fatigue, it does not mean that everyone has this condition.  Some children do not and should not be given the over the counter supplements for adrenal support. 

This can change at any time of course but just nothing I don't advise everyone go get the supplements without first looking at symptoms to determine if this might really be a problem for your child.  It is fairly common in mercury toxicity though because that is one of the only metals know to affect adrenal gland function.

I personally learned that this condition is very often missed but can really cause a lot of problems in your health and functioning. Treating it with over the counter supplements goes a long way towards supporting and healing the glands so they can work properly.  The use of natural over the counter supplements to treat adrenal fatigue has been around for many years.  In fact doctors didn't always have synthetic cortisol to give patients and they did rely on the use of glandulars prior to that time.

Sometimes parents have determine a child has struggling adrenals but they are unsure about treating it.  Once they do, and they see their child is not having anxiety attacks anymore, or tantrums. They are sleeping better, their mood is better, and in many cases allergies reduce or asthma improves......they come to realize how important treating this really was!

-Jan Martin

Yeast is a word that brings dread to most parents. While adults also struggle with treating candida overgrowth it seems to affect adult more in children. The symptoms displayed by children are varied and bothersome and may include constipation, rash, hyperactivity, stimming, self limiting diets and congestion.  So when people hear that yeast might flare up with chelation, their apprehension to start chelation is completely understandable.

Thankfully there is a solution! We've learned that you can safely and naturally manage fungal overgrowth and reduce or eliminate symptoms while you work on chelation.

It does take time to learn to recognize what symptoms yeast causes for your child but these become clearer when you start treating yeast.

Getting started is as simple ad choosing an acidophilus based probiotic or one with several good strains of bacteria.  You would start with a low dose and slowly increase it to reach the recommended dose on the bottle. There may be some die off initially but this should pass in several days.

Once you have reached this and your child is tolerating the probiotics well, you can begin to add in your natural herbal antifungal.  There is a list of antifungals in the book you can choose from.  Just choose ONE and start with a low dose.  You can gradually increase the dose to reach a point where most yeast symptoms are controlled. It might not be gone entirely but it should be much better.  In almost all cases you are going to see die off which is confirmation there was an fungal overgrowth.  This usually settles down in a few days.

You might see this anytime you raise the dose, and you may have to raise or lower the dose in response to yeast symptoms and whether or not they are on a chelation round.

On important thing to remember is that probiotics are bacteria too, just good bacteria. Some of the natural antifungals are not selective enough to only kill bad bacteria so you should make sure probiotics are doses at least 4 hours away from antifungals.

Another key point to remember is both supplements can be raised and lowered giving more when yeast flares up.  Treating yeast is a daily ongoing process until enough chelation has taken place that the immune system is able to normally balance the yeast numbers and keep them at healthy levels.

Some children benefit from avoiding dietary foods known to feed yeast like sugar and bread.  Children in this category seem to crave these foods and don't want to eat anything else. While doing this is not required, in some cases of really stubborn yeast, it can help.

On rare occasions we do see a child that despite lots of natural antifungals and probiotics yeast is still out of control.  In these cases the low-sulfur diet may be helpful.

Either way, remember to start only one thing at a time and watch for reaction. Always raise slowly to avoid harsh die off symptoms!

It does get better with adequate chelation! Yeast will become much easier to control with less antifungal and eventually it will go away entirely.

-Jan Martin

*for further information on treating natural fungal overgrowth see the Yeast Chapter in our second edition book.

ne of the secondary issues for anyone affected by toxins or heavy metals can be leaky gut. The mantra for addressing this over the years was always to replenish the gut with expensive high dose probiotics dysbiosis infections like candida/yeast and bacteria.

While there are some very good high dose broad spectrum probiotic products on the market they are not always affordable or easily obtained for every family I help. 

So something we have looked into and shifted our focus towards was the use of fermented foods in providing a broad spectrum of high dose probiotics to help balance and heal the gut.

The perk of fermented foods is that they contain far more probiotics than anything you can buy in a bottle and they very easy and inexpensive to make.

When I began doing this I wanted to find something that would be more palatable than sauerkraut for our family.   Fermented ginger carrot slices have been called the “gateway ferment”  for beginners or skeptics. While they are not sugary sweet they are crispy and tart and would appeal to children who like raw carrots. It only takes one or two carrot slices per day to provide ample probiotics!

In my own recipe I used raw ginger peeled into pieces, a little bit of real maple syrup and salt brine.  Recipes do vary and there are many to choose from on the internet which gives you a large variety to try until you find something that works for your family.

I make my ferments in glass bale jars (pictured above), called "Fido Jars" which can be purchased relatively inexpensively. They do not required any fermenting valves or other special equipment but they do less gasses escape during fermentation but keep oxygen out to avoid spoilage.

This natural home made option is takes but minutes to prepare. The rest of the process happens on it's own on the counter. A few days later, you have enough probiotic rich servings to last weeks!

Happy Fermenting!
-Jan Martin

Question: Can someone please explain what all this frequent low dose means and why it's important?

Answer: We chose to use frequent low dose chelation after doing a lot of research on how to treat heavy metals. I wanted something safe because I was not willing to risk safety at all. After much deliberation I came upon Andy Cutler PhD and his work on low dose chelation. 

While I'm not a chemist I could understand that medications and supplements had a life span in the body.  I knew they only lasted so long before they are broken down, used up and excreted. This is why medications have dosing frequency.  For example, a cough medicine label may suggest taking it every 4 hours. This is because it's no longer working after 4 hours.  This process isn't any different for chelators than it is for aspirin or cough medicine.

The problem with most mainstream chelation methods is they ignore this fact. The fancy name for this process is "pharmacokinetics". Pharmo what?

That's what I said when I learned about it years ago but essentially what is means is the half-life of a substance. It's how long something lasts in the body.

Half-life is so important in chelation because every time you take a chelator, it grabs onto to some metals and they are escorted out of the body with the chelator. This happens over and over as long as there are chelators in the blood. This process stirs up metals and drags them out of storage for excretion. That is what you want to happen.

However, if you only take one dose of a chelator and then stop it.  You have stirred up metals but the one dose of chelator can only grab a bit of it and the rest is left to float around and then settle somewhere. This process is called "redistribution".

The tricky part about redistribution is that mercury really likes the brain and nervous system. This is usually where it gets stored. So that's where it is most likely to go when you stop chelators. If you keep taking single doses of chelators randomly this will keep happening and likely cause a worsening of symptoms known as a "regression".

The good news is this can be prevented from happening if you respect the half-life of the chelators. 

Frequent low dose chelation works to prevent that by keeping a steady blood level of chelator for set number of hours, (at least 64-72 hours) which allows a good steady pull of metals which lowers the blood levels so much that you don't push mercury back into your brain when you stop the chelators. It is also going to pull more out of storage than a random dose here or there.

The protocol also uses very low doses in relation to the weight of the person taking them. Since you don't never use high doses it is much gentler. What a concept right?

We have to thank Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler PhD who developed this safer method when he  recovered himself from mercury poisoning. (you can read in-depth about Andy's protocol and mercury poisoning in his book Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment)

Since the late 1990s people have been using this protocol to recover from mercury poisoning safely.

I've used it to recover my children and myself from mercury poisoning. I hope that helps!
Best in Recover,
Jan Martin